Oceans of Joy

Hi everyone! This week my girl turned five years old. FIVE!! Can you believe it? Remember when I posted this? Sigh, the time goes by much too fast. But I'm so proud of the sweet, smart, creative girl Courtney has grown into. For her birthday party this year, she said she'd love a "sea turtle" theme. She actually decided this last August when we were on vacation in Florida, and she stuck to her guns! LOL! Since sea turtles aren't THAT common in the birthday decoration realm, I convinced her an Under the Sea, ocean-themed birthday would be ok too. :-) I'll share some photos of the party in a minute, but first, this is the birthday card I made for her:

I played with my Oceans of Joy clear set from Hero Arts. The sketch is this week's Mojo Monday. The square panel in the background was stamped with smaller images from this set and colored with Copics. I also colored that flower with my Copic to coordinate. And the whale has gems and a nice coating of Glossy Accents, just for fun.

As for the party - Courtney and I had so much fun making all of the decorations for it! It was a week-long art project for me and my girl - she helped with most of it. Nearly all of the ideas came from Pinterest, of course - I have an Ocean Party board with even more ideas. What did we do before Pinterest?? Umm, have simpler birthday parties?? ;-)

We painted bowls to make jellyfish (idea found here)...

The table centerpieces were whales made from clay pots, Courtney worked hard on putting the pipecleaner "water" in the hole on the top (idea found here)...

We even got big brother in on the action. Carter helped us paint toiletpaper rolls to prep one of the crafts the girls did at the party - a cute little octopus! (idea found here)...

I wanted something to go with the original sea turtle theme, so I pondered this for a while. Then it dawned on me that the ceiling fan had just enough blades to make a head and four legs...! It doesn't look exactly like a sea turtle, but nevertheless my birthday girl completely squealed when she saw what I did! It's just posterboard, folded in half, taped up and slid over the blades. Easy peasy!

Another simple decoration was fish made from painted paper plates (idea found here).

Courtney helped me put blue tablecover over the walls in our "sun room" - a little room off our kitchen that usually has patio furniture in it. The windows all have shutters, so it made it easy to drape the plastic from them and secure with painter's tape. We hung up the fish too, which exhausted my poor girl. :-)

Daddy helped hang the jellyfish when he got home from work, since mommy really does not like ladders...! Courtney posed for the camera, ha ha.

And the finished party room.

Courtney helped with the food too - she made the cheese sauce for our seashells and cheese.

We also had octopus hot dogs, sea cucumbers and other veggies with dip, goldfish crackers and some fruit salad (not a terribly lovely tablescape in this photo but you get the idea!).

And of course a sea turtle birthday cake! I was going to attempt to make a cake in the shape of a sea turtle, but then we found a plastic toy at the store and decided that would be MUCH easier to just plop him on top...!

At the party, the girls also glued shells to some $1 frames that we had painted ahead of time. We took a group photo of the girls at the party, and we'll send that along with our thank you cards so the girls all have one to put in their frames, if they'd like.

My girl had a ton of fun at her party, and better yet, I think she's really developing a love of all things crafty. Woohoo!

Thanks for stopping by today!